Tourism policy and destination marketing in developing countries: the chain of influence

Tourism marketers including destination marketing organisations (DMOs) and international tour operators play a pivotal role in destination marketing, especially in creating destination images. These images, apparent in tourist brochures, are designed to influence tourist decision-making and behaviour. This paper proposes the concept of a “chain of influence” in destination marketing and image-making, suggesting that the content of marketing materials is influenced by the priorities of those who design these materials, e.g. tour operators and DMOs. A content analysis of 2,000 pictures from DMO and tour operator brochures revealed synergies and divergence between these marketers. The brochure content was then compared to the South African tourism policy, concluding that the dominant factor in the chain of influence in the South African context is in fact its organic image

RADON: Rational decomposition and orchestration for serverless computing

Emerging serverless computing technologies, such as function as a service (FaaS), enable developers to virtualize the internal logic of an application, simplifying the management of cloud-native services and allowing cost savings through billing and scaling at the level of individual functions. Serverless computing is therefore rapidly shifting the attention of software vendors to the challenge of developing cloud applications deployable on FaaS platforms. In this vision paper, we present the research agenda of the RADON project (http://radon-h2020.eu), which aims to develop a model-driven DevOps framework for creating and managing applications based on serverless computing. RADON applications will consist of fine-grained and independent microservices that can efficiently and optimally exploit FaaS and container technologies. Our methodology strives to tackle complexity in designing such applications, including the solution of optimal decomposition, the reuse of serverless functions as well as the abstraction and actuation of event processing chains, while avoiding cloud vendor lock-in through models

methods and tools for the development of adaptive applications

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Stakeholder e-involvement and participatory tourism planning: Analysis of an Italian case study

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential and challenges of knowledge management, in particular the use of information and communication technologies, in supporting stakeholders' collaboration processes in the tourism destination by focusing on e-democracy. The term e-democracy was coined to define the electronic representation of a democratic process which aims at obtaining stakeholders active participation in the decision-making process about territorial policies and tourism planning. Despite the growing interest that this concept is gaining both in the academia and in the tourism sector, the related research is still at its early stage. This study was carried out to contribute to fill this gap analysing the case study of an Italian region where an e-democracy project on destination governance is currently going on. The main contribution to the body of knowledge, managerial implications and limitations of the study are discussed and future avenues of research are suggested

The Quasi Random Walk

Le but de cet article est de profiter de récentes découvertes en économétrie (processus ARCH) pour reformuler les tests classiques d'efficience des marchés financiers. Il est tenté, également, d'améliorer la qualité de la prévision des indices boursiers. Les tests classiques d'efficience sont réalisés à partir du modèle de la marche aléatoire. Le changement intervient, ici, en posant l'innovation du processus de marche aléatoire non plus comme un bruit blanc mais comme un processus ARCH dont les caractéristiques sont telles qu'elles respectent les conditions posées par Granger et Morgenstern (1970) pour tester l'efficience des marchés. Ce modèle, la Quasi Marche Aléatoire, permet une approche moins restrictive de la notion d'efficience. L'autre avantage de la Quasi Marche Aléatoire est qu'il va permettre d'affiner la prévision, grâce aux intervalles de confiance de prévision qui ne sont plus constants. Une étude empirique basée sur cinq indices boursiers mondiaux (Allemagne, États-Unis, France, Grande-Bretagne et Japon) va mettre à jour une plus grande tolérance de la Quasi Marche Aléatoire dans les tests d'efficience des marchés financiers et une meilleure appréhension de la prévision.The intention of this article is to take advantage of recent discoveries in econometrics (ARCH processes) to reformulate classical tests about the efficiency of financial market. It is also intended to improve the quality of stock index forecasts. Classical tests about the efficiency are realized from random walk. The change occurs here, considering the innovation of the random walk not like a white noise but like an ARCH process whose characteristics are such that they respect conditions given by Granger and Morgenstern (1970) to test the market's efficiency. This model, the Quasi Random Walk, allows a less restrictive approach to the notion of efficiency. The other advantage of the Quasi Random Walk is that it will help to refine the forecast, owing to confidence interval of forecast which aren't constant anymore. An empirical study based on five financial indexes (Germany, the United States, France, Great-Britain and Japan) shows a bigger tolerance of the Quasi Random Walk in tests of financial market's efficiency and a better approach to forecast.ou